Ghana approves use of Pfizer, Moderna vaccines – Nsiah-Asare

• Ghana has officially approved five Coronavirus vaccines for use

• The latest are American-made Pfizer and Moderna

• They add up to British AstraZeneca, Russia's Sputnik V and British Johnson and Johnson

Ghana now has five Coronavirus vaccines approved for use, according to the president’s special advisor on health, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare.

According to him, the Food and Drugs Authority, FDA, has approved the deployment of the US-made Pfizer and Moderna jabs in the country.

He made the disclosure over the weekend when he appeared on Joy News’ ‘The Probe’ program that centered on Ghana’s coronavirus response.

“So far I am happy to also say that we have five vaccines which have received the Food and Drugs authorization emergency use approval. We have added on over the last two weeks, we have added Pfizer and also Moderna to the list that we have.

“So now, we have AstraZeneca, we have Sputnik V, we have Johnson and Johnson, we have Pfizer and we have Moderna,” he told program host Emefa Apawu.

He further disclosed that given that the two US-made vaccines require extremely cold temperatures for storage, government had improved the cold chain storage systems to receive the vaccines, some of which are due to arrive in a few weeks

“Another good news is that Ghana Health Service, Ministry of Health and for that matter the Government of Ghana has improved the coldchain system we have in this country, so we are ready to receive Pfizer and Moderna.

“Pfizer is about minus 25, Moderna is minus 18, so as I speak now we have deep freezers, ultra cold freezers that can store these vaccines,” he added.

Ghana, he said, was due to receive about 1.25 million doses of Pfizer soon under the American government’s global vaccine donation platform that has sent million of doses to the continent via the African Union.

According to Dr Nsiah-Asare, the Biden-government considered Ghana as one of its priority nations and that, the jabs will help Ghana to roll out the second vaccine deployment phase.

He said, Ghana’s 20 million vaccination target remained intact as the government used different avenues to secure more jabs.

A little over 1.2 million vaccines have been received so far with some 860,000 vaccinations out of which only 400,742 persons have received first and second jabs.